Movies: 'Pirate' Geoffrey Rush has the personal touch

Tuesday

May 23, 2017 at 5:52 PMMay 25, 2017 at 3:04 PM

By Ed Symkus, Correspondent

You could call him a late bloomer. Australian actor Geoffrey Rush had already gone through 23 years of working in theater and small films before American audiences caught on with what became his Oscar-winning performance as troubled-but-brilliant concert pianist David Helfgott in “Shine,” which came out in 1996. And it’s been an additional busy two decades for Rush since then, with major roles in films ranging from “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Tailor of Panama” to “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers” and “The King’s Speech” and “The Book Thief.” Rush currently is starring as Albert Einstein in the well-received National Geographic Channel series “Genius.” But smack in the middle of doing all of these straightforward and mostly dramatic roles, along came the offer to camp it up a bit as a pirate named Barbossa, opposite Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.” The character has gone through a lot in the wildly successful franchise. He’s been Jack’s mutinous villain and he’s been his heroic ally. Due to a curse, he was once turned into a zombie. Later, he was killed and even later he was resurrected. And the character has a wooden leg. In the fifth “Pirates” entry, subtitled “Dead Men Tell No Tales,” Barbossa is presented as a sort of businessman of the seas. And, as always, Rush is a drolly funny in the part. The genial, deep-voiced Rush, 65, spoke about the film, which opens Friday, earlier this week in Los Angeles.

A quick “Shine” question, if you don’t mind. Were you actually playing the piano in the film? No. I played piano from when I was 8 till about 14. Then I didn’t play again until “Shine,” which was mimed. I certainly didn’t have concert-standard technique.

Thanks. Time to talk about “Pirates.” What keeps bringing you back to the series? Initially I was only going to be in the first film. It was just called “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Then we started to get daily memos that it was called “The Curse of the Black Pearl.” And the moment we saw that colon, we knew, “Hmm, sequel.” But I read the script and saw that at the end I die. I said, “OK, I’ve had fun. I played the badass villain who was the creature that was spat out of the mouth of hell.” But later on they came back to me and said they were going to shift the whole story, and that there would be a new villain, and I was going to come back because the bigger story that happens in part three is that all the global pirate lords need to be amassed by Barbossa, and [the character] Tia Dalma will bring you back to life ... with voodoo (smiles). And I thought, “Great!” There are lots of emotional changes in Barbossa from film to film. Does all of that come directly from the script, or are you able to give some input about him? When Barbossa was working for King George II in the last film (“On Stranger Tides”), the script was a little more blatant that this was a ploy. I spoke with [scriptwriter] Terry Rossio and said I think we should play it that it’s just the vanity of working for a nicer type of person, not pirate scum. So I made a bit of a contribution there. And now that Barbossa’s the corporate CEO, with vulgar wealth, it rings a lot of contemporary bells, in a funny sort of way, doesn’t it? I like that, and I like that there was a secret of his past that might reveal some vulnerability in him.

Barbossa has become a very popular character in the series. Do you get much fan mail because of him? I can’t imagine what Johnny gets. He must get bucket loads. But I get some. And I always answer them. I handwrite them. It may take three months, but they build up and then I sit down for a day and write back. I have noticed over the years that initially it was young women in Japan, and men in Germany, and I thought, “What’s the attraction of Barbossa there? What demographic am I appealing to?” More recently there’s been a tremendous amount of fan mail from Russia and China. I find this fascinating.Ed Symkus can be reached at esymkus@rcn.com.